Epilogue

The entire cast remains frozen in the photograph position. MANUELITA breaks away from the photo and refers to each one of the characters as she speaks, thirty years later.

ADULT MANUELITA:

Juan of the Chickens ended up forming a union of all the people in his field: sandwich-board people, sports mascots, singing telegram workers. He now leads the union, which has gone national. Flaca, my mom, worked at the cannery for many years. She put herself through school again, revalidated her degree and she’s now one of the top professors in pedagogy at SFU. Fat Jorge, my dad, worked at the steel mill for a decade. He drank and drank and drank. My mother eventually left him for Bill O’Neill, and my dad drank himself to death on skid row. He lived in the open wound and he died in the open wound. My brother Joselito, always the rebel, became a stock broker. Cakehead baked bread for many years. She put her potter skills to good use with the dough. She now owns the most successful bakery in East Vancouver. It’s called Cakehead’s Delicacies. She specializes in gingerbread houses depicting real-life experiences, such as people attempting suicide by sticking their heads in electric ovens or jumping off the third floor of a building only to land in a dumpster of fibreglass. Calladita is head of housekeeping at the refugee hotel, and, yes, she’s still with Juan of the Chickens. Condor Passes died of a brain aneurysm while lying in Cakehead’s arms. All those blows to the head finally caught up to him. They had just made love. And nine months later Cakehead gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. No one knows how it happened—but Cakehead said that Mapungenechen, the Great Mother, had her hand in it. Cakehead named the baby Salvador, after Allende. Pat Kelemen keeps in touch; she’s one of Cakehead’s regular gingerbread clients. As for me, I just do what my dad told me to do when I was a little girl: I keep my eyes and ears open. Oh, yeah. The receptionist filled a wall with photographs, because many, many, many more refugees came to stay at the refugee hotel. From Guatemala, El Salvador, Vietnam, Iran, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Colombia, Iraq …

The CUECA DANCER appears, doing his light zapateo.

ADULT MANUELITA:

It takes courage to remember, it takes courage to forget. It takes a hero to do both.

The end.